Daoism Explained: Laozi, the Dao De Jing, and Core Teachings

[00:00:01]Hello. It's said that on a cold misty night many years ago, an old man arrived at the western border of Imperial China.

[00:00:08]He was weary and keen to get on his way, but the border guard stopped him, recognizing him as a learned archavist of the Chinese royal court. The man in question was La Zar, the old master, and at the request of the guard, he stopped for the night and wrote down some of his wisdom. In doing so, he created what was to become the most revered text of the Dowist faith, the Dao De Jing. According to Dowist tradition, these nocturnal events took place sometime in the 6th century BC. Although today some doubt that such a person as Lazar even existed. Dowists thought has been a powerful force in China for centuries.

[00:00:43]Today Dowoism is a world religion perhaps best known in the west by some of its symbols and practices such as the yin and yang and the art of fenu. But how did this complex religious philosophy spread and what lies at the heart of its teachings? With me to discuss Dowoism are Tim Barrett, professor of East Asian history at the school of oriental and African studies in London, Martin Palmer, director of the international consultancy on religion, education and culture, and Hilda Deviet, fellow and tutor in Chinese history at Pemrook College, the University of Oxford. Martin Palmer, at the heart of Dism is a notion called the Dao. Can you explain what the word means? Well, the word itself simply means a road or a path or a street. we first come across it probably around about 1500 BC when it's carved on oracle bones and the such like um but by the time you get to the shuching the book of history which is probably being compiled somewhere around about 800 BC it's beginning to take on a different meaning in fact two different meanings one is a sort of moral path um you know the right way to go the right way to behave um but at another level it's also being linked with the character for heaven so it's heaven's way and With that comes the notion that this is more than just a moral code. It's more than just the proper thing to do, the proper path to follow in a sort of legalistic sense.

[00:02:03]It's beginning to be u but very tentatively an idea that there is a divine element to this that we're being guided by.

[00:02:12]How um it's I'm going to refer to it as religion but it it goes over into philosophy as well, doesn't it? And also touches on myths. So can you give us some idea at the beginning of the complexity of it? Well, the complexity is enormous because at one level uh you have uh the Dao is used as much by Confucianist writers and philosophers as it is by the philosophers who when you say can you please when you say the Dao in this program what do you what do our listeners take? Okay, let me Yes, you're quite right. I haven't really gone to the heart of it. Essentially in the way it is used now it means a notion that there is a universal way a way of nature that simply is how nature is. It's not moralistic. It simply is. It's rather like gravity. This is how the universe operates. And Dowoism teaches you that if you go with the flow of nature with the way that the universe actually is then you can achieve almost anything. If you resist it or if you go against it then you will undermine it. And I mean a classic example of this would be that in 2000 uh the dowist religion in China excommunicated people who used uh endangered animal parts in traditional Chinese medicine. And they did so on a philosophical as well as as a practical basis. They said the whole point of Chinese medicine is to rebalance your body between the yin and the yang. These two cosmic forces. If in order to rebalance your body you have put the universe out of kilter because you've contributed towards the destruction of tigers or rhinos or or such like then it's not going to work. You cannot abuse the fundamental pattern and harmony and stability of the universe which is the Dao and expect to succeed. So the Dao becomes this in in Dowist philosophy and then in Dowist religion it becomes this um principle of how the universe actually is and it's not necessarily divine.

[00:04:18]It gets a divine patterner with all kinds of deities and gods and rituals and magic. But at its heart, it is a fundamental philosophical proposition that the universe has its path and if you flow with it, you'll do okay. If you don't, you could run into a wall. You actually use the word flow twice. And the idea of flowing water is one of the strong images in the D, isn't it? It's a very strong image indeed. It's often called the waterc course way because uh you could argue that there have always been two traditions within China as to how you approach a problem. One would be the sort of legalist to some extent confusionist approaches. There's a boulder in the way, you remove it. The dowist approach would be you flow underneath it, you flow around it and in a couple of thousand years it'll be a little pebble and get washed away. So there is that sense of the inevitability of the Dao over against as it were the confrontational dimension and and one of the heart heart of of Dowoism is this belief in Wui in actionless action that actually by not doing action as inaction action as inaction doing nothing is probably the most positive thing you can do. And in the Daq Ching, the the book you you've just referenced from the 6th century BC, um the the sage who does nothing and the people do not even realize he's ruling them, but they are ruled according to the Dao is the highest ideal. An emperor or a ruler who brings in laws, he's failed. I'm going to use that as my model for the rest of the program. Tim, but nevertheless, we'll go on.

[00:05:57]Can you go further into the origins of Dowism, Tim Barrett? Yes. Well, I think we have to go back to your uh introduction and to the uh supposed uh creator of Daoism or or the the man who is said to be responsible for this text la which means just the old master. So there have been doubts about his identity for as long as people have talked about him and the earliest uh account we have of that story goes back to perhaps the end of the 2nd century B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B BC. Um LZA is already a slightly puzzling figure in that on the one hand he is said to be an older contemporary of Confucious which of course would put him into the 6th century BC. uh who was consulted by Confucious about ritual which sounds a bit surprising uh but uh certainly in the accounts we have Confucious is is extremely impressed and says Lousa he's like a dragon uh which is the highest compliment you can pay a person I should think in those days uh on the other hand uh he is also said to have been the man who 150 years later at least uh predicted the rise of the first emperor. Now, if the same figure is both teaching Confucious and predicting the rise of the first emperor, um he knows something that we don't because he would have lived for a very long time. Uh so there's already a mystique about him right from the beginning. And the story you told about his exit from China, um having perceived that the dynasty was in decline, it says, um I don't know quite how that was. Maybe he was asked to make efficiency savings in the archives or something. Um but certainly he decides to quit his job and uh earliest example of a brain drain head westwards. Um that story probably goes back at least uh 100 years or so before uh it's actually in the form that it's recorded.

[00:08:11]Um and again that gives him a mysterious end as well as a mysterious beginning because he's never seen again. Um this causes no end of confusion later on when Buddhist ideas start to come into China from the west because uh as we may explore later um the question then is is Buddhism perhaps a confused account of La's teaching filtered through non-Chinese minds um or is it perhaps a counterfeit um attempt at recreating Dowoism in India? But on the whole, what we're talking about is somewhere between the 6th century BC and the 2nd century BC, a person or persons unknown or a movement began something which became Dowoism and started to uh exercise influence and bring together a collection of rules, laws, books and so on and then moved then moved perhaps west.

[00:09:13]Well, that's uh fair enough except that really all we have uh from early times is the Daajing and some other uh literature that will Have we dated those accurately? Well, uh I wish we could.

[00:09:27]The earliest manuscript evidence we now have goes back to the 4th century BC, but it's fragmentaryary. Uh and it's very recently that we've discovered it, the early 1990s. Um what's mysterious about it is that there are the three manuscripts that were found together um from in the 1990s give us parts of the daing uh including one or two overlapping bits but they don't give us the whole of it and that raises the question as to whether it existed as a larger text from which these um parts have been exerpted.

[00:10:11]or whether perhaps the whole thing is like a collection of proverbs that have been gradually um brought together in an accepted form and that's certainly a hypothesis that many people find appealing. Hilda de it it had a it has a relation had a relationship with uh confucutionism and one of the myths or whatever uh whether it's a fact or myth we don't seem to be sure no you don't seem to be sure um was uh was his relation with Confucianism and that confucious was a pupil now can you tell us about that relationship between the two well on the face of it confusionism looks like a very different kind of tradition as as Martin was was saying earlier Um, Dowoism is a tradition that focuses on the way as the foundation for individual, social and and political life. Confucianism on the other hand focuses on proper behavior as the key to individual fulfillment, social harmony and political order. And it analyzes uh proper behavior within the context of a set of social and political relations.

[00:11:17]The kinds of relations that characterize good family relationships. um relationship between father and son, husband and wife or amongst siblings.

[00:11:25]There's also a strong political dimension to confusion fight uh and that's embedded within the relationship between ruler and ministers. Um there is some difference of opinion amongst confusions as to whether such proper behavior is the outcome of natural inborn uh capacities or whether it's something that needs to be learned. But by and large and here perhaps there is a similarity between uh dowist and confusion thinking. Confucians would believe that we are programmed to practice its core values. So that whereas Dowists would claim that moral conventions are artificial. They're not in conformity with the dog, confusions would say the exact opposite. They they think that we are actually uh naturally programmed to practice the kind of core uh moral values that they advocate. Um, but it's perhaps also worth keeping in mind that the story about Confucious is probably not entirely um fictional in the sense that interactions between the texts and and perhaps the thinkers that we've come to associate with Confucianism and Dowism are as old as these texts uh and and the thinkers themselves. So this that is to say that confusion and dowist ideas and practices developed in relationship to each other from the very beginning. These relationships were of different sorts.

[00:12:39]They conflicted uh with each other. Uh they intermingled with each other. Uh and they also coexisted. Yeah. But but Martin Palmer pointed out in his opening remarks that there was a difference. If there's a boulder in the stream, Confucianism would say remove it. Uh and the Dowist would say let the water run around it underneath it and eventually a the water will keep going and b the builder will be eroded anyway. Uh so is this difference between the idea of effort and effortlessness between a hierarchy between action and inaction is that something that's there near the beginning and is it seen as such? It is it is certainly seen as such and uh drunk one of one of the key uh texts within the Dowist tradition brings up that criticism early on. He sees uh confusion uh moral conventions as artificial as not in conformity with the way they're impositions that people have come up with. Um but it is sort of worthwhile perhaps also to look at this from the confusion perspective and that they would say well actually that's not necessarily the case. The uh one of the um perhaps strongest advocates of of this confusion position is Menus who was a contemporary roughly of of Dwanza 4th century philosopher who claimed that um the core values of Confucianism such as humaness or ritual behavior. the the the idea that people will cooperate voluntarily uh and through uh sets of uh uh rules of etiquette that these ideas are embedded within our hearts and minds and all we need to do is to cultivate them. So they are there we need to make make some effort but it's not uh something that we have come up with. Tim Tim has proposed the tantalizing proposition or possibility that uh a form of Daoism went west from China into India and came back into China as Buddhism. Uh what do you make of that and what briefly is the relationship between Buddhism and Dowoism? Well, perhaps it's worth sort of defining the the concept to start out with. On the face of it, again, Buddhism is is a radically different uh tradition from from Daoism. Um perhaps uh one of the the core ideas uh in in Dowism, the idea that we can prolong life by um conforming with the way is illustrates this most effectively that for Buddhists avoiding life, escaping life is a is the goal. Whereas for Dowists that actually prolonging life is is a uh a key objective. It is indeed. At the same time, it's it's worth keeping in mind that uh when Buddhism was first introduced in in China, they felt that Dowist concept were perhaps most useful in trying to render ideas that were foreign to a Chinese audience uh intelligible um to um their um their audience. Good illustration of that is the idea of nirvana, the idea of the extinction of the self within Buddhism was something there wasn't really a good equivalent for in in Chinese fod. Uh but some early translators thought that actually perhaps this idea of wooue of effortless action could be one that we can capitalize on to explain to a Chinese audience what we're all about.

[00:15:49]Now it's even though those attempts were made, it is worth keeping in mind that uh this was a controversial idea that for some Buddhists was an effective way of rendering ideas to find a similarity within a a Chinese um tradition. Some felt that this was a corruption of the original. Martin Martin Palmer um this uh Dao Jing um whenever is written in 6th century BC is warned date and a bit later is the most influential text. Can you uh we're supposed to be about 5,000 words long. When you can you give us a can you tell us what it says and why it was so influential? Well, it's its influence is in in in various ways. What it is is exactly as Tim said. It's it primarily it probably is a collection of proverbial sayings of oracles and explanations that were collected together. Um it's often described as a manual of leadership but a manual of leadership which in a sense contradicts the normal assumption of leadership. Uh it's much more the sense that the most skillful leader is the leader who is invisible, who nobody knows is actually leading. But it's also um a very profound theological book at certain points. Although there is no real consistency, it's it's more as though somebody had sort of chopped up the Bible and scattered bits of it together and then stuck it together and you had to kind of work out from that what the the philosophy was. But for example, in chapter 42, you have the nearest thing to a daist creed that there is. It says that the Dao, this this natural way of the universe gives birth to the origin, to the beginning of everything, the one.

[00:17:28]The one then gives birth to the two, which is the yin and the yang. Um, and these are cosmic forces. They're not moral forces. They're not divine forces.

[00:17:37]They're just forces of of the universe.

[00:17:39]And the two give birth to the three which in traditional Dao is thought is heaven, earth, and humanity because humanity's role is to hold a kind of tension between these two vast forces which are yin and yang. And then you have all this gives birth to the myriad things to everything that exists. So you have a a sort of creedle statement, but that's about it. There isn't a great deal of explanation beyond that.

[00:18:02]Philosophically, it's um very profound.

[00:18:05]It's very thoughtprovoking. It's not terribly funny, unlike an awful lot of the other Dowist material, which we we'll come to later. It's fairly dry. Um and it has been treated as a deep philosophical text. However, it's also been used for exorcism. If you chop up bits of it and and uh burn it uh on yellow paper and mix it with water, you can give it to people to to get rid of demons and evil spirits. Um and I've even seen copies of my own translation into English which have got English and Chinese texts and a nice picture on the cover uh being used for magic and stuck under the back of a pregnant woman to help child birth. So it's a book that has uh a crude around it not just philosophical readers. It's not just a sort of um uh educated text. It has actually shaped a magical mysterious world including the founder of religious dowism DQ um Chang Daing who claimed that he'd been given it along with a magical sword by La demons from the world. You want to develop that Timbard?

[00:19:14]Yes. Um we've come on to the point where uh people are claiming Laza as an inspiration. Um clearly at that point we're really talking about the middle of the 2nd century AD. Now uh he's seen as a superhuman figure. It must be said that by that time people thought very highly of Confucious too. So he has become lads has become the kind of counterbalance to confucious um as the alternative sage figure especially if one didn't feel comfortable with confusion ideas and there was um a certain rejection of confusion ideas at during that century the 2nd century AD because the empire that was uh that had uh elevated confucious was falling apart.

[00:20:04]So it's probably natural that people should have looked for alternatives, should have looked to Laa for inspiration should through this figure of Jang Daing and others have looked for an alternative to empire and where they found it was in the unseen world of the spirits. Um, we have to rather than try and impose our own ideas about religion on China at this time, remember that the most basic division um in the Chinese worldview was between the seen world and the unseen world in which spirits lived. Um, and there if um the empire of the visible world was descending into chaos, the invisible world was probably descending into chaos too. and needed someone with a mandate to uh restore order or quell demons as Martin said. Um and this individual uh Jang Daling certainly claimed that mandate. He wasn't the only one to compete in this sense. But this becomes the root perhaps of uh the organized religious tradition.

[00:21:18]But right from the start, it has to be something that governments are cautious about because it's based on the idea of empire. Um, and even today in China, I think religions are viewed with a certain suspicion because they are seen as having a principle of organization that is equivalent to empire. Martin, you briefly want to cover a very important point that Tims brings up is these two worlds and that takes us back to another force quite apart from the philosophical that flows into Dowism which is shamanism and the early religion of China particularly um right up until the the power of Confucious to sort of control and and determine what is uh order is this shamanic world in which people go into transes visit the spirit world and the spirit world is brought in to heal or to answer problems but it's also an anarchctic world. It is not controlled by us. We are controlled by that word. And I think Tim's absolutely right. That's why Dowoism in particular of all the religions in China has been seen as the most subversive. It ultimately says reality does not lie here. Hilder, can I ask you about theangar?

[00:22:30]It's another important text. Uh it's a handbook on leadership. How effective was that and who took any notice of it?

[00:22:36]Well, the joys is both the name of a of a text, a text. It was compiled roughly between the 4th century B.CE. and and the 2nd century B.C.E. It's also an appellation for one of the authors of the text. Literally, it means master Dwang. Now, we don't know a whole lot more about Master Dwang uh than uh a few fragments that we find both in the text itself and in some contemporary historical uh records. he was a minor official called Jong Jo in one of the small states in in which China was subdivided uh during this period in and time. Um the text itself is um quite different from from the way in which the Dijing has been characterized and that it's perhaps more limited in the kinds of applications and in a religious context than uh than the Ding.

[00:23:19]Um the one of the core characteristics perhaps of of uh the person behind it as well as a text uh certainly within the context of fourth fourth century China is that it has no explicit interest in in government. A lot of the texts in this time period are concerned with how can we create a unified empire. This term has come up before how we can put to rest the kind of social and political problems that characterize uh this period in time. At the core of this text is is is an approach to individual happiness. that's less concerned about the social and political dimensions of creating a peaceful society. It is concerned with uh the individual uh primarily. Um so how can we sort of discover the road to individual happiness from uh Dwangza's uh perspective? Well, we'd say that there's there's both a positive and a negative answer to this question. The negative um part of the question we've already hinted at. In part it involves a critique of moral conventions, confusion, uh, morality. But there's another dimension to this that we haven't really touched upon yet. And that is the idea that argumentation rhetoric isn't quite helpful in helping us understand reality either. Perhaps this is somewhat of a contradiction within the tradition and that writes beautifully uh about this this aspect.

[00:24:33]Uh but if we see it within its context, there was a clear reason for this that there were logicians uh out there who felt that they could demonstrate how uh reality was was structured and they they thought this wasn't enough that logic was not enough. Dang thought that uh logic in in some ways leads us away from the da that we we need to experience the da and that's the only way in which we can really prove it. Yes, it's interesting that that's another um can you just give us a summary Martin?

[00:25:01]People have been listening to this I trust as intently as I have. But where are we in about the second or third century AD? How many what proportion of the population does it have buildings?

[00:25:13]Does it have where is it going? Are these ideas floating around between archavists and scholars and philosophers or have they extended into a more general population and and other congregations? Can you just give us an idea of where it is in the in the Europe? Okay. Um by the end of the 2n century uh AD you have an organized religious structure which to a certain extent parallels dascese and parishes within uh Christian Europe in that as Tim mentioned Changen becomes this very charismatic figure who teaches and he he's around the middle of the 2nd century AD teaches that he now has the power to forgive sins uh that he has the power so they had sins. Oh, they had sins. And in fact, you can have sins in inaction. You can.

[00:26:04]No, I think you get sins through action, but I think that's fairly normal actually, Melvin. Um, in action doesn't often lead to sin. Um, but they had discuss.

[00:26:15]That's another program.

[00:26:18]I meant to keep silent for There you go. the um and indeed his movement is is called the five bush or the five sort of baskets of rice movement because you paid this fee on an annual basis and on the basis of that you were then provided with with essential sort of exorcist magical healing practitioner your parish priest if you like your local dowist priest would take care of you and look after sorry to be so brutal about this but this is all over China at that time is it is it is it localized is it small it's not as big as confusion as not at Confucianism is an official policy of the empire.

[00:26:55]Dowoism essentially at this stage is a series of small sects who are growing very powerful. Exactly as Tim said because the the the imperial world is collapsing. This is the time in which uh the old Han dynasty that have been ruling off and on for about 400 years is finally reaching its end. And so for example, you get the yellow turbons revolt which is a dowist inspired revolution uh against the imperial forces and they wear yellow turbons to show that this is the a new era, a new era of heaven. Um and they actually take up arms. you get a dowist uh republic being created uh which actually functions for something like 30 years based on dowist principles like the DQ Ching and then has the wisdom to actually kind of hand over power to the next emerging kingdom and then you've got charismatic spiritual figures. It's it's a bit like Pentecostalism in Christianity. It pops up unregulated, uncontrolled, nobody's in charge. It's based very much about magic, but it also has Hillier also has um things to say about how people should live their daily lives. Can you briskly tell us about what you should do to be a good dowist or what it tells you to do to be a good human being? If is it good thereafter or living long thereafter? Um well, we can find uh some indications and perhaps this is another way of reading the doine that it was in in part also sort of a self-help guide. uh we find in the daring one of the earliest descriptions of meditative practices in in Chinese culture. Meditation is one of the ways in in which Daoism became embedded. What are you meditating for?

[00:28:32]To get in touch with somebody to calm yourself down. What are you doing it for? In in order to find that unity with the data to the flow that we talked about in in the beginning. There's a variety of other reasons, but perhaps it's it's worth um focusing on on some of the uh aspects of of meditation. It's not just mental concentration. does meditation also included dietary restrictions uh or dietary practices, breathing exercises, uh certain grains should not be eaten, certain grains could be eaten and and and so forth. Um physical exercises, we we have an an early text from from the third century that uh pictures the kinds of physical exercises that can help someone focus um on on the D and not get and this is the the logic behind a lot of these practices. They seem like a a widely varied AML gam but the logic behind this is that such practices can help the individual um focus. Uh it it moves us away from indulging our senses auditory visual or our appetite for food for sex and so forth. Tim Barrett, can I come to what's perhaps best known to the general public about this which is the yin and the yang. How does that play out in the early days and then how did it become so strongly established?

[00:29:44]Well, it's actually uh something that appears only gradually in the in the Daajing itself. It's only mentioned once and Martin has also mentioned the cosmological uh chapter in the Daajing where the one produces the two, the two produces the three and the two the commentators say are the the yin and the yang. And and and that's uh probably the case. I'm not sure about the three, but the yin and the yang are defined in the earlier sources we have as the difference between light and shade.

[00:30:20]The sunny side of a hill versus the side that is in shade. Um, and it's only gradually that it comes to be seen as um, a term that embraces two forces that are constantly interacting in in the wider world of whatever we like to call it, nature. And it was a term, however, that because it embodied the idea of constant interaction. If you think of the symbol of yin and yang, the circle divided between black and white that also has a little spot of white on the black side and a little spot of black on the white side and a wavy line between them. Um, I think this implies that this is not a static uh division between uh two separate things but um a constantly moving um balance of forces. And this idea proved immensely productive not simply for readers of the Da Jing but um all early Chinese thinkers from um at least the 3rd century BC onwards and indeed confusions would have been perfectly happy to see the universe in those ter terms too. As I understand it sorry do you want to go now? As I understand it Martin um a lot of the teaching comes through fables. Can you give us some example of that please? Oh, that's the joy of Darism, frankly. And I mean, um, Hilda's already mentioned, uh, uh, Tuang. Tuang has this wonderful story of how he says, you know, um, last night I dreamt I was a butterfly. I was having a wonderful time. I was splitting here and there and had no idea I was twang, sir, and then I woke up. And then he goes, or am I actually a butterfly who thinks he's Trang, sir? and you get that wonderful twist but also uh and Hilda's also mentioned that Tanga was not terribly impressed by official and there's a story when uh one of the local kings sends two emissaries to see him a kind of Rosen Crants and Gilden Stern of the 4th century BC and they come and they say you know the the king would like you to come and be the prime minister and is sitting by the a stream with his feet in the in the stream and he says um tell me in the great temple of your king. There is hanging on the wall, garlanded, protected, venerated, uh the shell of a tortoise that's 3,000 years old that is used for sacrificial and for for oracle reasons. And they go, "Um, yes." And you can see them kind of thinking, "Oh, dear." And then he says, "Now, do you think that tortoise wanted to be killed so that its shell could be venerated for 3,000 years, or do you think it would have preferred to just continue swimming around in the mud?"

[00:33:09]And of course these poor courtiers have to once answer and say well probably think it just wanted to swim around in the mud and chancer and I'm going to use a very polite phrase it's not polite in the Chinese says well shove off then and let me continue to swim around in the mud but then you also have these wonderful stories of the of the eight immortals the sort of fairy figures the the fighters for justice and the best one there is Tqui Lee who is incredibly handsome and viral and decides to become an immortal so that you know women can see him forever and enjoy him and He goes off and studies and he becomes gets to a stage where he can astrally travel for seven uh days. He goes off, he leaves his body with a disciple. His disciple gets called to see his dying mother. So he burns his body. Tquly whizzes back, can't find his body, has half an hour to find a body before his spirit disappears.

[00:33:56]Leaps into the first body he finds and he spends the rest of eternity in the body of an aged, crippled, hunchbacked, hideously deformed beggar. It's that sort of gameplay that Dowism so enjoys.

[00:34:09]The uh Hilder the the Duh I'm told in the Dao De Jing means power. So how given that we're talking about effortless action and so on. How what part did power play in Dowoism? I should mention that power is one of of several translations. We have difficulty rendering this concept in in English because it is so many different things at the same time. Yet it was a core part of Daism from the very beginning. The da jing originally was separated into two books. At least one of the early manuscripts has it as the ding, the book about the da and and the ding. The book about power, potency, virtue or a variety of ways in which it has been rendered. So some clarifications perhaps in order uh if if we see the dao as sort of universal pattern of of change of development that applies to just about anything we can think of. Um we can see the duh as sort of our individual instantiation of the da that is to say that the duh is our individual link with the way uh so everything develops there's a cycle through the seasons there cycle in our own lives but every individual does not go through these cycles with the same vigor um and perhaps and maybe some uh disagreement about this but I would venture to say that what we see here is perhaps a slight move from a philosophical description to a normative ethics that as individuals we also have to strengthen that link with the way. Uh so we have to cultivate the the way in which um the da is um uh within uh ourselves. Um but power in in our English translation also conotes political power and this raises an important question and I think one that is at the core of the duting as well and perhaps shows a different dimension to this text but perhaps one of the reasons why it has been part of of the Chinese tradition. Did the Dis have anything to offer in terms of a solution to practical political problems? And the answer would be yes. It it does quite clearly uh many of the fragments are specifically addressed to rulers of state. Can you can Tim Barrett uh what part does the spirit world play in the power politics of Dowoism to take on elders point and to bring up the something that Martin mentioned earlier the spirits can you give us a yes obviously because the spirit world was eventually seen as an as an invisible empire. It was um very important for the ruler to show that they had that empire brought into harmony with their own uh temporal power. That's when dowist priests became important to rulers. Uh to my mind the really significant development there was one that seems purely accidental from uh some points of view that uh in the 7th century a family came to rule China whose surname was Lee. It's a very common Chinese surname.

[00:37:13]Most people um would know a Mr. Lee uh if they have Chinese friends. Um, it just so happens that Lza's surname also is said to have been Lee. So the this dynasty, therefore, given that he was a um a superhuman sage figure in in later thinking, they naturally claimed descent from him. Therefore, they could reinforce their temporal power with the assertion that they also had uh good connections with uh the unseen world. uh since this dynasty lasted about 300 years. Uh this leaves a pattern of um connections between uh the Dowist priesthood and the imperial power whatever that was in China. um in that everybody saw it as important uh before this event, but especially afterwards to try to claim that the uh ruling dynasty uh was as it were the one that the spirit world would have wanted to have seen on the throne. Martin, can you give us a curve now because unfortunately we're coming towards the end of the program. Um I just like the listeners to have some idea. We you we you we've talked about its origins.

[00:38:40]You've talked about how what it stood for, how it set out and so on. Gangghis Khan comes into play and then then we have to but can you give us some idea of the parabola from then from the what we call the middle ages to now where it was, how it disappeared, how it came back. It's a big it's a tall order, but there you go.

[00:38:57]Yes. I mean, by by the time you get to uh the time that Tim's talking about, the the seventh century in the Tang dynasty, Dowoism is pretty much spread across most of what was then China and and and spreads out beyond that into the areas that are newly conquered. And it has established a parish-based system with local temples and big temples and sacred mountains and pilgrimage and rituals and so on and so forth. It still is considered a bit suspicious by by the imperial powers um and certainly as it because they prefer confusionism because they prefer confusionism and also because it had this ecstatic dimension which meant that people didn't necessarily do what they were told and didn't do it in the right order and also as Tim's very clearly pointed out they were dealing with a spirit world. So for example, so I'll take you through because essentially dowism to some degree kind of goes to sleep for quite a long period. There are no major new movements. You get poets who use it. You get scholars who use it but it it it doesn't produce any major thinkers um and major activists and new schools really after about the 12th 13th century and it becomes very much the folk religion. It's not the powerful religion of Buddhism. It's not the powerful structure of Confucianism. So by the time you get to the revolution in 1911 when the last empire falls and the republic comes the republic basically takes over probably something in the region of about 50 to 60% of dowist temples throws out the priesthood and turns them into schools or turns them into colleges or turns them into useful places and then of course communism comes and daoism in particular is seen as just superstition. they really hammer it. And by the time you get to um the cultural revolution and the aftermath of that, our estimates would be that there were probably no more than about four or 500 Dowist priests left functioning. And yet it's changed radically, hasn't it, Tim Barrett, for today? Yes. I think it's always possible to underestimate Dowoism um because it it tends to take a low profile. 26,000 as I understand it temples temples. Yes. So is this a comeback or It is a comeback. It's it's more than a comeback. Um although the great communicators have always been Buddhists in China. Um they have learned from the Buddhists uh certainly how to organize uh a religious tradition in the modern world to the extent that what amazes me I mean Martin will probably be able to tell you how they um are operating in China now. But to me, what is extraordinary is that Dowist texts that were hidden away in the cannon in times past are now freely available on the